Computing systems have made significant contributions toward the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous devices, such as desktop personal computers (PCs), laptop PCs, tablet PCs, netbooks, smart phones, servers, and the like have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in communicating and analyzing data in most areas of entertainment, education, business, and science. One common aspect of computing systems is the display subsystem and the graphics processing subsystem that renders images on the display subsystem. When a computing device is started, a boot process is performed to initialize the various subsystems, including the display and graphics processing subsystems. The boot process typically starts with execution of a power on self-test (POST) routine and ends with loading and execution of the operating system (OS).
The boot display device is the GPU device that drives a display during the boot process until the OS display driver assumes control. The boot display device, also referred to as the primary display device, is selected by the System BIOS (SBIOS). In standard desktop systems, and most other systems, the system BIOS must decide which boot display device to initialize, without knowledge of which device has a display connected. Deciding which boot device to initialize without knowledge of which device has a display connected to it can result in no display until the OS display driver assumes control. Accordingly, there is a continuing need for an improved boot process.